


Reconciling

by IneffableLabPartners



Series: Entrapdak Extended [1]
Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Apologies, Canon Compliant, During Canon, F/M, Imp the Literal Wingman, Missing Scene, Reconciliation, Silly Canon Observations, Soft Hordak (She-Ra)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-06-29
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:02:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24979654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IneffableLabPartners/pseuds/IneffableLabPartners
Summary: “You know…there are more efficient ways to execute someone than banishing them to a hostile location.”Hordak makes amends with Entrapta after his outburst over the Crimson Waste, and the two of them decide what to do about Catra. Some of his leadership choices areslightlycalled into question.
Relationships: Entrapta & Hordak (She-Ra), Entrapta & Imp (She-Ra), Entrapta/Hordak (She-Ra), Hordak & Imp (She-Ra)
Series: Entrapdak Extended [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1808257
Comments: 16
Kudos: 114





	Reconciling

**Author's Note:**

> This scene takes place during s3e1, “The Price of Power”.

Saw. Tweezers. Pliers. Multimeter. Entrapta was in her room, mask down, working with every tool she could get her hair on at once. Her workbench was starting to wobble again, but this time she was pointedly ignoring it. The door opened behind her, and from the ominous shadow that fell across she didn’t have to look to see who it was. He had brought Imp with him.

“Ahem.”

“...” Entrapta’s soldering iron soldered on.

Imp chirruped.

“...After reviewing your research on First Ones tech in the Crimson Waste, I have decided that I am willing to discuss it further.” He was calmer now than she’d last seen him, with something different from his usual demeanor that she couldn't define. “I believe I have come up with a compromise for our disagreement.”

She shut off her tools, but didn’t reply. Imp chirped louder.

Hordak continued, strained. “I may have... overreacted to your request. You approached me at an — inopportune — moment.” He swallowed. “And I...”

Entrapta set down her gadgetry and lifted her mask. She turned to look at him, still not having finished his sentence. 

“...had already written my speech for the assembly.” He was holding the datapad she’d left behind with the crinkled map of the Crimson Waste folded neatly on top. A lock of blue hair had escaped his slicked back style and fallen across his forehead. His armor twinkled in the glow of the soft purple lighting she’d recently installed. She bit her lip.

With a screech, Imp jumped off Hordak’s shoulder into Entrapta’s arms, thwapping him in the face with his tail as he did so. “ _Entrapta,_ ” he said, softer than she’d ever heard that voice say her name before. She giggled.

“Imp, that is hardly dignified.” Hordak stared at the two of them, his eyes a little bigger, as Entrapta embraced Imp and kissed his cheek. His skin was peculiarly smoother than a human’s but still baby soft.

“Have a seat, Hordak.” She gestured toward her purple couch. “Let’s talk.”

“ _Emily!_ ” Imp said, with Entrapta’s voice.

“She’s helping Scorpia with something before the mandatory assembly - I wasn’t planning on going!”

Using her hair, Entrapta retrieved two fizzy drinks with straws from her personal cooler. Fizzy rations were one of the changes she'd been able to implement to the Horde menu, though her old chefs had refused her offer to come work at the Fright Zone. (She'd even tracked them down with the Sanctum communicator and everything.) The Horde drinks were green without much flavor, but still: fizzy.

Hordak looked at the beverage she placed in his hand the way Scorpia looked at small buttons. He hesitated to sit down, as if he’d never touched anything soft before in his life. Had she ever seen him sit in a chair other than a throne? It was times like these that Entrapta felt better about her own social shortcomings.

“So.” She sat cross-legged next to the caped warlord, whose winged toddler leapt off her lap to perch himself at the highest point on the back of the couch. Hordak’s cybernetics were _right there_ , close enough to touch, but she couldn’t let herself get distracted. First Ones tech (and Catra’s life?) was on the line. “What’s your solution to our tech problem?”

“Since the Crimson Waste has a reputation almost as treacherous as Beast Island...” Hordak handed his own bottle to Imp, who seemed to have a better idea of what to do with it. “I will allow you to send Catra there on a mission to retrieve First Ones tech.”

Entrapta smiled. “Thank you.” Her pigtail draped itself over the back of the couch, curling around Imp, inches from Hordak’s shoulder.

He didn’t smile back. “It must be alone, no other lives at risk,” he grunted. “If against all odds, Catra returns with what we need - she will be pardoned for proving her worth. If she does not return after an allotted period of time, she will be presumed dead and a failure. You will have to come up with a contingency plan should that happen.”

She took a sip from her fizzy drink. “Why do you think she won’t return?”

His ears wiggled, just slightly. “I lost a whole faction to that wasteland 20 years ago, including my most fearsome and competent warrior.” He bowed his head angstily, somewhat undercut by the soda sipping toddler next to it.

“Huntara. I have her file right here.” As difficult as it was to find _anything_ in that archaic filing system. She hair-grabbed a stack of Horde folders from nearby, which Commander Cobalt had assisted her in locating. “However, I’ve noticed more than a few discrepancies between Shadow Weaver’s reports and my own research. Are you sure that her version of events can be trusted?”

“As long as the others believe what she told them, it will serve the purpose that I need.” He furrowed his brow and looked away from the photograph clipped to the inside of the folder. “But your skepticism is not unwarranted; Shadow Weaver did have something of a duplicitous side.”

Despite her difficulty with social signals, Entrapta had picked up on that fairly quickly. “Yet you kept her around for 25 years?”

“The sorceress proved her worth to me with the role she played ending the first Rebellion, but I let her ride off that goodwill for far too long. If Scorpia had shown any connection to the Black Garnet, I would have rid myself of that treacherous witch long ago.” He narrowed his eyes at the tall stack of manila folders. “For her insistence on paper recordkeeping alone.”

It was almost a joke, but not. “So what are you going to do about her escape?”

“It is too late to do anything.” First Adora, now Shadow Weaver - apparently walking out of this place had less consequences than staying. “The only thing to be done is punish the person responsible, as a message to the others that such failures will not be tolerated.”

Entrapta took another sip. “By sending her away?”

“It is harsh, I know.” He gestured with his big metal arms, the ones she was forever yearning to go to town on with a hex-driver. “I am not a charismatic leader, Entrapta. I cannot inspire love and devotion the way others can. Fear and pragmatism are all I have.”

“And robots.”

“Yes.” His scowl fleetingly turned to a smile. “Had Catra been truthful to me, it would have allowed me to be lenient, as I have been with her before.” Hordak seemed to believe what he was saying, in that moment. He was easier to read than most people. “But I cannot abide both a failure and a liar. It would be repeating the same mistakes made with Shadow Weaver.” 

“You know…” she said, after another sip. “There are more efficient ways to execute someone than banishing them to a hostile location.”

He blinked. “What do you mean?”

“Firing squad, lethal injection, hanging, electrocution, decapitation.” Entrapta mimed each of these with her hair. “A few more minutes in your atmospheric variable remover would have done it.”

He was making that face again, where his eyes were bigger than his little red mouth. “I thought you wanted me to spare Catra. Are you suggesting that I… cut off her head?”

“I’m just curious, why not? It would be easier. More cost effective. And I’m no social scientist, but I would think it might inspire more… fear?”

“No—” he scoffed, raising a finger. Was that a hint of red on his cheeks? She would have to log this. “—Beast Island is a fate _worse_ than death. Those condemned there have only their own failures to blame for their… failures! It is a much MORE terrifying punishment than… than...”

“Heads on spikes? I’m not sure that’s coming across to your soldiers, though.” She downed the rest of her drink and pulled up the datapad. “78% of cadets over the age of 13 believe Beast Island is a fabrication told to keep them in line.”

“...where did you get that number?”

“Commander Cobalt gave me the statistics from his semi-annual survey. He said Shadow Weaver refused to take any of it into account for the cadet curriculum!”

“Beast Island is real,” he growled. His hand grazed her hair as he pushed the datapad away. “I have been there. I will say nothing more.” He folded his technologically advanced arms and looked away.

Entrapta had seen that file as well. The record of the only Horde expedition to Beast Island wasn’t very detailed, but it mentioned Huntara as one of the soldiers who had accompanied Hordak there. She was given the highest of accolades for her service to him, only to perish on a mission to the Crimson Waste two weeks later, along with ten other soldiers. Cobalt had some soft science theories about the psychological effects of the trip, but that was far out of Entrapta’s field of expertise.

She inched closer to him. “But we’re sending Catra to the Crimson Waste.”

“We are,” he sighed, giving her a wry smile. “Though I do not expect her to return.”

“I disagree.” She strummed her fingers on the datapad. “My research gives her a good chance of survival.”

“Yes, she may indeed survive. She is more capable than most...” He tilted his head, squinting. “But that does not mean she will come back.”

This stung in a way she wasn’t prepared for. “You mean — you think — she’ll _abandon_ us?” she choked.

Imp squeaked and bopped Hordak on the head with his tail.

“It is what I suspect others have done.” His ears drooped as Entrapta flipped down her mask. “That is why I did not want to send her there in the first place. It would be a waste of resources to hunt defectors down in a deadly wasteland!”

Her breath fogged up the inside of the mask. “But then we won’t get the First Ones tech!”

“Entrapta...” he said softly, holding up his hands. “I had rather thought saving your friend from a fate worse than death would be your top priority. I thought that is _why_ you were upset with me.”

“...” A more charitable reading than most people would have given her, but not wrong. She pulled her mask up. “It was. But I wanted the tech too.”

His ears didn’t know which direction to go. “Is there something else you would have me do?”

She thought it over. It was touching that he was willing to let an untrustworthy prisoner go for her, though not entirely surprising given past trends. “No. Catra will come back, if you give her the chance. She’s my friend.”

Hordak pursed his lips skeptically, then nodded. “I will give her the chance, but I will not be kind about it. All must know this is pragmatism, not mercy.” He stood, adjusting his cape, then looked at her with a tiny smile. “Will you come back to the lab with me?”

“Yes.” She grinned back. “But first you have to go to your assembly.”

He looked at the time, scowling, and smoothed back his hair. “Let’s get it over with then.”

“ _Heads on spikes?_ ” Imp said, with a belch.

“No.” Hordak pointed a talon, then offered his arm. As Imp jumped on him, the fizzy drink slipped from his tiny hands. Entrapta’s hair caught it before it could spill all over his cybernetics (somewhere in an alternate universe, the war came to an odd end.)

When they got to the door, Hordak suddenly stopped, turned, and held out his other (Impless) arm to her. Entrapta was halfway to cracking it open to analyze his circuitry before she realized he was offering to… escort her? He seemed just as surprised about it as she was. His ears drooped again, with a hint of pink across his cheeks.

Beaming, she wrapped her hair around his armored forearm, mentally noting every bit of feedback.

“I still need to choose a new second-in-command,” he said stiffly, as they entered the hall.

“Ooh, how about Commander Cobalt? He’s served you faithfully for 25 years and has a degree in military science.”

“I was thinking of Force Captain Scorpia. Someone who would _never_ betray me...”

**Author's Note:**

> Presumably, Emily was helping Scorpia hide the body of the prison guard she threw into the abyss (with no consequences.)
> 
> Commander Cobalt is the blue fuzzy guy who trains the Horde cadets ~~and also the secret mastermind behind everything.~~
> 
> I'm surely headcanoning against authorial intent with Hordak acknowledging Catra has a chance of surviving the Crimson Waste, but I feel like this whole storyline was a bit of a mess in canon ... so here's me trying to clean it up.


End file.
